Table 6.

The correlation of Sox-9 expression with patient’s age, tumor size, gene expression level in tumor tissue, PBMC and protein expression level.

Variable	Malignant bone cancer			Benign bone cancer
	Tumor gene expression	PBMC gene expression	Protein expression	Tumor gene expression	PBMC gene expression	Protein expression
Age
Correlation	0.244*	0.128	0.237*	−0.135	−0.083	−0.079
P value	0.035	0.274	0.041	0.249	0.480	0.502
Tumor size
Correlation	0.691**	0.640**	0.711**	0.678**	0.653**	0.623**
P value	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001
Tumor gene expression
Correlation		0.834**	0.793**		0.814**	0.702**
P value	1	0.0001	0.0001	1	0.0001	0.0001
PBMC gene expression
Correlation	0.834**		0.717**	0.814**		0.866**
P value	0.0001	1	0.0001	0.0001	1	0.0001

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).